


always yours, j.b.b.

by darth_stitch



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hopeful Ending, Love Letters, M/M, OTP: Not Without You, OTP: Till the End of the Line, POV Outsider
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-18
Updated: 2015-03-18
Packaged: 2018-03-18 10:57:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3567116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darth_stitch/pseuds/darth_stitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I remember how they always began.</p>
<p>
  <i>Hello, Baby.  I miss you.</i>
</p>
<p>I remember how they always ended.</p>
<p>
  <i>always yours, j.b.b. </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	always yours, j.b.b.

I was eight years old when I found _The Letters_ in my grandmother’s attic. They were in a pretty wooden box, which had a pattern of roses on the lid.  I wanted the box for my Barbie doll clothes.  The letters were just a bonus.

I remember how they always began.

_Hello, Baby.  I miss you._

I remember how they always ended.

_always yours, j.b.b._

I took note of the date - 1942.  I was an avid reader as a kid and I loved history books.  World War II was something I was especially interested in because Gran would always tell me stories about how it was like, living in that time.  She always worried that Gramps wouldn’t come back from the war - he’d been in the 107th and she’d later learn that he’d been taken prisoner.

Gramps would come home though - the story of how he got rescued by Captain America and how they fought their way out of that Nazi base with actual blaster guns just like in _Star Wars_ was one of my favorite bedtime stories.  There was nobody like my Gramps for telling stories and he twinkled at me when he cottoned on that I had a giddy crush on Captain America so he’d always make a good deal of how handsome and dashing he was - larger than life, had this big movie-star smile but, as Gramps put it, “the kindest fella I ever met.” 

For a minute there, I thought it was a letter written by my grandfather to my grandmother because it ended with his initials - _always yours, j.b.b._   John Barrett Browning - that was Gramps’ name, just like the poet.  So I ran to show the letters to my Grandmother and she shook her head in wonder, telling me that these weren’t my Gramps’ letters and she hadn’t a clue where they came from.

The house they lived in was pretty old, she said.  There was stuff in the attic from the previous owners that she and Gramps had never got around to cleaning out. 

So we sat down, read the letters and found ourselves a mystery.

It didn’t take long for us to figure out that we were holding a love story in letters. 

_Hello, Baby, I miss you_ \- was how they’d always start.  J.B.B. would worry about his baby’s health, telling her _"bundle up, sweetheart - I’m not there to keep you from the cold."_ He’d write funny, interesting stories about his time in Basic Training, his buddy Dum Dum, who’d drag him into all sorts of “shenanigans.” 

_Don’t worry.  I may have flirted with the dames some, but I never broke any hearts and I sure as hell ain’t breaking yours.  I made sure they knew I was already rationed, saving all my sugar up for you._

Gran laughed and laughed and said whoever this J.B.B. was, he was a charmer and a smooth-talker.  “Don’t you trust a word he says, sweetie!  Any boy who lays a line like that on you, you tell ‘em to keep walkin’!”

I giggled along with her. 

_I know you’re worried that I’m not coming home and that’s the real reason why you want to come over here so bad._

_Don’t._

_It’s hell here and an angel like you don’t deserve to be anywhere near this place.  Don’t._

_You’re my home, baby.  Stay safe, stay out of trouble, stay over there.  
_

_Please let me come home to you._

That was one of the passages that made my Gran cry.  I cried too.  We both ended up crying together until Gramps came home, blinked his eyes comically and said, “What in heaven’s name is the matter?  What’s wrong?”

He was so worried and was consequently relieved when we told him we were crying over a bunch of old letters.

Gramps, bless him, said, “Well I hope this fella did come home to his baby.  I think he did, don’t you?”

And Gramps was so earnest about it, that I wanted to believe him.

At eight years old, I did.  I still wanted to believe in happily ever after. 

When I was fifteen, it dawned on me that maybe, just maybe, “j.b.b.” and his love story wasn’t quite what we had thought it was, a soldier writing home to his lady.  There was an element of despair, sometimes, in the letters, hints of things that were possibly keeping them apart.

And there was this:

_I left you my Ma’s ring.  I said it was meant for you to pawn.  Truth was, I meant it for you to keep._

_In sickness and in health, for richer and for poorer, to love and to cherish and I have had an ongoing argument with Death attempting to part us every time you get sick in winter.  I’ve been winning those arguments so far.  God willing, I’ll keep winning them._

_So I made those vows to you, long ago, though only Jilly’s cat has been my witness.  And that kitty’s going to be our only witness too, things being what they are._

_I’m not going to be too bitter about it.  I have you anyway.  That’s enough for me._

Why couldn’t they be together?  Why wasn’t I reading about a promise of marriage after the war?  Why didn’t J.B.B. say “we’ll marry when I come home?” Why did I end up reading something like this instead?

_If things were different, I’d say:  baby, wait for me, I’ll bring you home the silk from my parachute and we’ll make it your wedding dress and I’ll bring us to the priest and get us married the minute I set foot home.  But you’d probably sock me a good one on the shoulder, tell me ‘white ain’t my color, you jerk’ and we’d both laugh._

_You still look awful cute in a dress, though.  I haven’t forgotten that.  
_

When I was eighteen, I already knew I wanted to work with history, preserving the past, studying it, teaching it.  It was mainly because of the letters.  More and more I suspected that J.B.B., whoever he was, wasn’t writing home to someone he could make his _wife_ \- I was beginning to believe it was something completely different.

When some states started announcing that they were going to legalize gay marriage and I was seeing that World War II vet marry his partner of fifty years, I _hoped_ that J.B.B. got that opportunity.

Stupid of me, I know.  But I still wanted to believe in happy endings.

The life of Captain America was something I ended up studying and I knew this was what I wanted to write my paper on.  History’s first super-soldier - a sickly Brooklyn boy who became the world’s first superhero.  I wanted to pierce through the propaganda and the myths and just find the _real_ person beneath.  Somebody who, as I did further study, really was worth all the honor and the respect everyone gave him.  Though he was a far cry from the “pious modern American saint” people tried to make him into. 

That was when I got my hands on so much material, thanks to financial grants and getting to places like the Smithsonian - Cap’s letters, his sketches, the memoirs of his friends, the unclassified SHIELD files.  Sometimes, his sketchbooks - especially the ones from the war - had different handwriting in it - funny observations, wisecracks, the humor biting and wry. 

The handwriting was familiar. So was the tone of those jokes. 

Of course.  I’d been looking at that writing almost all my life. 

_always yours, j.b.b._

James Buchanan Barnes.

I had that checked by colleagues and friends who were handwriting experts.  They confirmed it.  The letters were authentic.  The handwriting matched exactly. 

There was always a lot of speculation about the real nature of Steve Rogers’ relationship with Bucky Barnes.  And maybe, if both men were actually dead and I was just writing a paper - what would later be a book - on someone long gone, it would have been easier to talk about it objectively, with the right distance.  And Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes deserved the truth told about them, not somebody’s bigoted ideal.  

William Burnside was a cautionary tale for a lot of us. 

But Cap was alive and now, recently, we were all told about the real fate of James Buchanan Barnes, who’d been brainwashed and tortured until he became the Winter Soldier. 

Surprisingly, once I thought about it - the decision was easy. 

The letters were meant to be with J.B.B.’s “baby” - so I gave them back. 

A few months later, I received an email.  It was an invitation to an apartment somewhere in Brooklyn.

Steve Rogers and J.B.B. were ready to tell me _their_ story. I was going to be allowed to put it all in my book.  

They’re still a long way from a happy ending.  But they’re getting there.

I’m hoping that they do.

_\- end -_

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted at [The Blanket Fort](http://darthstitch.tumblr.com/post/93282777211/always-yours-j-b-b-i-was-eight-years-old-when)


End file.
